


"Kicking The Asses of Giants: A Refutation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics" by Dr.Rodney McKay

by The Spike (spike21)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-07
Updated: 2006-11-07
Packaged: 2020-09-26 19:10:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20394718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spike21/pseuds/The%20Spike
Summary: "In approximately one million billion years the universe is going to stop making new stars."





	"Kicking The Asses of Giants: A Refutation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics" by Dr.Rodney McKay

**Author's Note:**

> For Sarah T.

John rolled over. His hand found cool sheets and no Rodney so he opened his eyes. Rodney was across the room, ghost-lit in the glow of the laptop, hunched over his keyboard, typing and scowling.

"What's up?" John asked.

"Shh," Rodney said. "Working."

"You get a call? Something break?"

"No," Rodney said. He backspaced viciously a bunch of times and started again. "I'm just working on something."

"Something important?"

"No," Rodney snapped this time. "Something trivial and meaningless, like everything else I do around here. What do you think?" He was still half-whispering, as if John were asleep. His eyes hadn't left the screen. John knew this one. It happened maybe once or twice a month, although he wasn't sure what it was about. Rodney would never say.

"I think you should come back to bed," John said.

"Soon," Rodney said.

"Okay," John said. He left it there. Sometimes you just had to work things through on your own schedule. Especially if you were a genius with a Nobel Prize to win. And since he was a Mission Commander with evaluation reports to write in the morning, he turned over and pulled the covers up to his neck and went back to sleep.

He woke again when cold toes pressed up against his calf. He would have complained but then Rodney was right there pressed up behind him, arms coming around to hold him tight. Tight.

"You work it out?" he said, reaching back to run a hand over Rodney's side. Rodney didn't say anything, just held tighter, buried his head in John's neck. He was... Jesus, he was shaking. John went on full alert. He tried to turn over but Rodney was holding too tight.

"What is it?" he asked. "Are we in trouble?" Rodney exhaled a sound into John's neck that really wasn't anything like a laugh.

"If Clausius and Hubble are within cosmological walking distance of correct," he said, "in approximately one million billion years the universe is going to stop making new stars."

"Wow," John said. "And here I was freaking out because there are only 47 shopping days left until Christmas."

Rodney went on as if John hadn't spoken at all.

"The old stars will cool and become degenerate matter," he said. "Nothing life-sustaining -- just black holes, brown dwarfs, neutron stars, quark stars. The huge masses will dismantle galaxies -- pulling stars and planets out of their orbits, leaving smears of star stuff everywhere. Disintegrating molecules. Unbound atoms. After a while even the protons and neutrons will just... decay; the degenerate stars will become singularities; even the black holes will evaporate. And you know what will be left? Nothing, nothing and oh, a big fat side of more nothing."

"Rodney..."

"Nothing," he whispered fiercely. "Nothing. All the living, all the dying, all the _trying_ and hurting and... " He shook his head, face grinding softly into John's hair. "I can't _stand_ it."

John struggled a little against Rodney's desperate embrace.

"Hey," he said, sharply enough to get Rodney's attention. He could hear Rodney swallow noisily, but then the vise grip loosened enough for him to turn around within it.

"I know, I know..." Rodney said before John could say anything. "It's not... I _know_ it's... It's just that this is actually my field and I'm... I should be able to fix this."

"Fix the heat death of the universe?" John asked. Just for clarification. Sometimes the sheer magnitude of Rodney's ego was hard to wrap his brain around, but there it was. And it wasn't _entirely_ outside the boundaries of rationality.

"You think I'm full of it," Rodney said.

"That goes without saying."

"Well, not about this," Rodney said. "I have... thoughts. Ideas. Valid ones. There are so many variables at my fingertips -- dark matter, superstrings -- not to mention the entire database of a race with a ten thousand year head start on cosmology and a galaxy that apparently plays by a whole different set of physical rules. If anyone can fix it, it's going to be me. It _has_ to be me. If I don't..."

"Then nothing," John said.

"Nothing," Rodney repeated, bleakly.

"In a million billion years."

"That's when it starts, yes." John looked at him. Rodney looked down. "Maybe another ten thousand octillion years after that for total entropy."

"Octillion. That's a big number."

"That's not the point," Rodney said.

"I know," said John.

"I could die tomorrow. The problem goes unsolved forever. All for nothing."

"I know," said John. "I get it." Rodney didn't say anything after that. He just tucked his head into the crook of John's shoulder and sighed. John could only hope Rodney believed him.

The thing was, he _did_ get it. Maybe he didn't stay up nights worrying about it like Rodney did, but he wasn't exactly thrilled at the idea of everything just ending like that. Of all of this just not being anymore and no memory of it, as if none of it had ever been.

Even if John took most of his meaning from the here and now. From the immediate fact of survival and the need for it to continue, if only for the sake of the people he was responsible for today. The people he cared about. Maybe loved.

Just because soldiers couldn't let that kind of all-embracing existential freakout swallow them up, didn't mean he didn't have to fight it off from time to time.

And if there was anyone living today who could solve it, refute it, deny it and prove otherwise, it probably _was_ Rodney.

Rodney, who was now snoring softly on John's shoulder while John stared up into the darkness, sleep an octillion billion miles away.

"Thanks buddy," John said, dryly, kissing Rodney's damp temple. “Thanks a lot.”

Funny thing was, he kind of meant it, too.

*


End file.
